Commentary: 5 reasons we can’t solve Big Problems anymore

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — “You Promised Me Mars Colonies,” warns astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the cover of the MIT Technology Review, “Instead, I Got Facebook,” And there, folks, you have the anti-Silicon Valley argument in a nutshell, according to the Review’s editor-in-chief Jason Pontin in his provocative article, “Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems.”

Why? One answer: Because America’s government no longer thinks long-term, no longer invests in Big Problems like landing a man on the moon. So Silicon Valley, and the rest of America’s top innovative technology geniuses, focus on short-term money-makers like Facebook and other Small Problem stuff like Twitter, Instagram, Farmville.

Back in 1972 Pontin was just five at Apollo 17 liftoff: “My mother admonished me not to stare at the fiery exhaust of the Saturn 5 rocket. I vaguely knew that this was the last of the moon missions — but I was absolutely certain that there would be Mars colonies in my lifetime. What happened?”

What happened? Why no Mars?

“That something happened to humanity’s capacity to solve big problems is a commonplace,” says Pontin. “There is a paucity of real innovations. Instead, they worry, technologists have diverted us and enriched themselves with trivial toys.”

Guys like PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel are echoing Aldrin: “We wanted flying cars — instead we got 140 characters.” Pontin even says “Thiel is caustic,” he doesn’t even “consider the iPhone a technological breakthrough compared to the Apollo program.” The Internet is “a net plus — but not a big one.” And yes, Twitter is “job security for the next decade,” for 500 people. But Thiel, one of the best thinkers in the Valley, asks the big question: “What value does it create for the entire economy?”

Apparently not much to Silicon Valley critics: “We should be aiming higher.” From the Founder’s Fund manifesto, “What Happened to the Future?” They warn that “venture investing shifted away from funding transformational companies and toward companies that solved incremental problems or even fake problems.” Instead of being a “funder of the future,” Silicon Valley had “become a funder of features, widgets, irrelevances.”

But is Silicon Valley inventing this Big Problems syndrome?

The criticisms are misleading, says Pontin: “The argument that venture capitalists lost their appetite for risky but potentially important technologies clarifies what’s wrong with venture capital and tells us why half of all funds have provided flat or negative returns for the last decade.”

But “even during the years when VCs were most risk-happy, they preferred investments that required little capital and offered an exit within eight to 10 years.” Truth is, “VCs have never funded the development of technologies that are meant to solve big problems,” says Pontin, in a direct challenge to Silicon Valley’s so-called Big Problems syndrome.

And that forces him back to the core question raised by Buzz Aldrin, Peter Thiel and every high-tech investor interested in quarterly profits and big payoffs: “Putting aside the personal-computer revolution, if we once did big things but do so no longer, then what changed?” Pontin does a brilliant job diagnosing five key Big Problem macrotrends:

1. More important public policy alternatives, like investing on Earth

Seriously, is Silicon Valley’s Big Problem a real problem? Or did their high-tech geniuses make it up? Pontin says “sometimes we choose not to solve big technological problems. We could travel to Mars if we wished. NASA has the outline of a plan,” and “if the agency received more money ... humans could walk on the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s.” But “we won’t, because there are, everyone feels, more useful things to do on Earth.”

2. Economic costs force huge constraints on technology

Energy is a real Big Problem with real cost issues: “Less than 2% of the world’s energy consumption was derived from advanced renewable sources such as wind, solar and biofuels.” Still, “coal and natural gas are cheaper than solar and wind ... petroleum is cheaper than biofuels.” Another: Yes, climate change is a real Big Problem. But because the main cause of global warming is carbon dioxide released as a by-product of burning fossil fuels, we need renewable energy technologies that can compete on price with coal, natural gas and petroleum. At the moment, they don’t exist.”

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